Can We Talk About Paul K? (an elegy, one year later. Pt. 1)
I guess I was twelve or thirteen…1989 or 1990. It was my freshman year of high school. I had been to a rock and roll concert at this point. I had seen R.E.M. on the Green tour. I had an older sister who had gone to arena concerts, and I wanted to go to one myself, so I bought myself a single ticket in the very back row, and I sat by myself and watched Michael Stipe and Company play songs I knew from Green and Document. It was fine—didn’t make a huge impression on me, but it was a concert, finally. Before that, live music was always something at church. I was in the choir at an Episcopal Cathedral and learned to sing four and eight-part harmonies to pipe organ accompaniment in the Anglican tradition. I also played in the post-Vatican II music of the Roman Catholic Church of the 1980s with pianos, guitars, and “modern” music from Glory and Praise vols. 1 and 2 at the church where I went to school and where my family attended. I got a good dose of folk music and guitar singalongs with the church youth groups in both buildings. I was raised with music, and I had a strong foundation of music theory, appreciation, and education. But that night, everything changed.
I don’t know what made me look in the newspaper at the local club listings—that decision and what brought it on will forever remain a mystery to me, but somehow, I saw that the local live music venue (a mere three blocks from the aforementioned Episcopal Cathedral, a seedy little hole that I’d driven by literally a thousand times) had an “all ages” show on a Sunday night. Those all-ages shows on Sunday nights would become legendary for the 90s era youth of Lexington, KY—but to my knowledge this was the first one.
I sat, wide-eyed and amazed at what unfolded before me. Real, by God, rock and roll music. Loud, messy, live, and in-your-face. Everything changed for me that night, like a baptism of sorts. This wasn’t a folksy singalong, nor was it arena rock by radio stars. This was raw; this was live; this was it. Three bands played that night, each better than the last. And the third? The third band was Paul K and the Weathermen.
…to be continued next week
